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Richly detailed 'Myst IV' stirs imagination

By Ric Manning, The (Louisville) Courier-Journal

Before there was "Doom" or "Unreal Tournament" or even "The Legend of Zelda," there was a computer game called "Zork."

'Myst IV' is chock full of challenges, including exploring a mysterious island through various 'ages' of time.

Gannett News Service

It had no rapid-fire pulse rifles, no motion-captured action figures, no cinematic cut scenes and no fully rendered 3-D environments.

In fact, it had no graphics at all. It was all in text. The game interface that you used to explore the Great Underground Empire in "Zork" was a black computer screen, a winking green cursor and your imagination.

You typed commands like "go E," "get in boat" or "pick up shovel" and the game responded, sometimes by revealing buried treasure or magic potions, sometimes by revealing a club-wielding troll.

It was absolutely mesmerizing.

Of course, computer games and the machines they run on have changed enormously since "Zork" first appeared in 1980. Whether today's games are more entertaining remains debatable.

Playing "Zork" and some of the other games of the day that were called "interactive fiction" was like reading a "Lord of the Rings" book for the first time. You could be transported to a strange and mystical world and caught up in a powerful and addictive story.

You don't see many games like that today. They are mostly simulations of real-life situations — whether it's the Normandy invasion, a Major League Baseball game or the "Sims" go to college — or gory bloodfests requiring mastery of a mouse or gamepad.

The original "Myst," released in 1993, broke from the pack. It was visually stunning and intellectually challenging. Speed and dexterity counted for little as you explored a strange, mostly deserted island.

The two sequels lacked some of the charm and accessibility of the original, but the latest version is back on the path. "Myst IV Revelation" from Ubisoft was released a few months ago for Windows and Macintosh, and it debuts as a console game this month with a high-definition version for the Microsoft Xbox.

The game extends the story of Atrus and his family in the world of D'ni, an ancient civilization that found the power to travel to distant worlds using the magic of "linking books."

Atrus provides the game's back story, but you — a nameless explorer — are center stage. As in the previous "Myst" games, you'll face a series of puzzles in your effort to unravel the mysteries of the D'ni.

And while many of the puzzles can be challenging, they are nothing that you can't handle. For example, to restore power to Atrus' abandoned lab, you have to find a fuse box, reroute a power grid and jump-start a dam.

Even if you aren't a puzzle master, you'll be captivated just mousing around the beautiful and richly detailed environment. The world of "Myst IV" looks better than anything you've seen in computer games and almost as good as how early video game fans probably pictured "Zork's" Great Underground Empire.